martasfic | The Great Wall

Has anyone out there seen The Great Wall? Even if you've seen the previews you've probably gotten the gist. The Great Wall of China is built to keep monsters out and China safe, leading to exactly the kind of epic struggle you'd expect. It's not about plot or clever turns or that kind of thing, so much as archetypes and truly stunning cinematography. Really very well done; I've seen it twice inside a week, which I never do with NYC cinema prices -- and both times in 3D, which I equally never do, for much the same reason.

On the last viewing, I found myself thinking that this was what was missing from PJ's The Return of the King. Imagine that kind of professional, awe-inspiring military force, that display of power and skill, just like Gondor was supposed to be. It doesn't track entirely; the wall isn't as all-encompassing or unbreachable as Great Wall, and there is an element of the personal hero's journey and not just the corporate struggle I don't see nearly so much in Chinese cinema. (Though it's there, and really well done - Lu Han's character brought more than one tear to my eye, and he doesn't speak a word of English in the film that I can remember! It's just less the focus in my experience.)

Anyway. Walls.

lindahoyland announced the latest Teitho theme, and it's about all the different walls in Middle-earth. Even as I was watching Great Wall I thought how much fun it would be to play with a GW/Pelennor Fields fusion with Aragorn as Matt Damon's character, balancing his personal skill with something beyond what any one man could do, with maybe (Halbarad? Pippin?) being truly wowed by the sheer precision of the defense Minas Tirith was able to put on, and trying to navigate that world.

I've had truly abysmal follow-through on challenges, but if someone out there wanted to play with this, I would read and/or beta the heck out of it.